


Stupid, Reckless, Idiotic

by pancakesforbreakfast



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: And they have a love-hate relationship, Cassian being reckless, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Jyn and Cassian grew up together, Jyn joins the Alliance instead of the Partisans AU, Radio Jargon, Teenage Rebels AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:33:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26652223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pancakesforbreakfast/pseuds/pancakesforbreakfast
Summary: Jyn and Cassian grew up in the rebellion together and constantly get on each other's nerves. But when Jyn hears Cassian pull a stupid stunt while on patrol over the comms, she finds that anger and love can be two sides of the same coin.The Teenage Rebels AU I didn't even ask for, but my brain gave me anyways.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso
Comments: 16
Kudos: 74





	Stupid, Reckless, Idiotic

**Author's Note:**

> So this definitely was not what I thought I'd write as my first fic for these two. But then I woke up from a dream with this rough idea, and Jyn and Cassian seemed like the best fit.
> 
> So let's pretend that in another universe Saw dropped Jyn off with the Alliance instead of raising her himself. She grew up alongside Cassian and a few other young rebels. The two of them have always had this somewhat antagonistic relationship, though they also cooperate on some things (like hacking the Alliance channels to make comm scanners, which they definitely aren't allowed). (I picture their relationship a lot like Anne and Gilbert from Anne of Green Gables.) 
> 
> Dex is a canon character, one of the pilots in the Death Star mission in A New Hope. I know nothing about him, but I decided he could be another war orphan who grew up with our pair, because there's got to be more than two kids the Alliance took in. 
> 
> Also, I may not know military terminology yet (especially not in the Star Wars 'verse), but I sure as heck have learned basic radio lingo in the last year! Hopefully, it's still pretty clear, but I'll put a few notes at the end in case not.

Jyn is only half listening to the traffic coming in on the comm device she and Cassian had rigged into an all-Alliance scanner a few years ago. It’s habit by now to tune out the voices calling out take-off and landing protocols, but she likes knowing when something big goes down and comms are still faster than the Alliance rumor mill (though not by much). She keeps fiddling with the code she’s trying to get to integrate with the messaging application most commonly used by low-level Imperial officers as voices buzz in her ear.

Then she hears Cassian’s voice, unmistakably accented even across the scratchy comms: “Blue Leader, this is Blue 8. Beginning sweep line southeast.” 

“Blue Leader copies. Keep it high, Blue 8.”

Cassian and another of their friends, Dex, are out on patrol today. Dex has been a regular on Blue Team – Blue 9 – since he turned fifteen eight months ago and was officially allowed to sign on. But Cassian has officially been working for Intelligence for a couple of years now (and longer than that unofficially, she knows). Yet he still volunteers for patrols when he’s in between missions, like the Hutt-kisser he is. Always the perfect soldier boy, Jyn likes to tease him.

Jyn herself splits her time between the Slicers’ Cave and training with the ground crews, unwilling to give up either skill (not that the Alliance would want her to anyways). She also has her eyes on the Pathfinder division, but everyone knows you have to be the best of the best to get in there.

She listens to the rest of Blue Team call out their sweep lines, picturing the U-wings breaking off above the canyon-rich landscape, and then returns to her work. They have to be sure the chip she’s coding won’t set off any alarms when plugged into some unsuspecting lieutenant’s dataport.

A little while later, the familiarity of a voice calls her attention back to the scanner. “― spotted. Going in to investigate.”

“Hold for backup, Blue 8. Break,” Blue Leader’s voice crackles in. “Blue 9, Blue Leader.”

“Blue 9,” Dex replies.

“Assist to Blue 8. ETA?”

“Copy. Assisting Blue 8. ETA five minutes.”

“Blue 8, do you copy direct?” the leader calls.

“I copy direct, Blue Leader. But I’m still going in now. Target appears to be preparing for take-off. We will lose them if we wait.”

Jyn can imagine the look on Cassian’s face right now – eyes narrowed slightly in determination, the very corner of his mouth quirking up, the closest he will allow himself to a smirk. It’s a look that means trouble. It means he’s done the calculations and has set his path. Jyn has seen it many times, most often when they’re fighting about something or other and he’s found the gap in her logic or the opening in her sparring form.

“Negative, Blue 8. Do not engage.”

Jyn wishes she knew who was flying Blue Leader these days, so she could better picture their annoyed expression. And their surprise when they realize that the young man known for being the perfect soldier can actually be a single-minded little bantha shit. 

“Coming in low. Looks like… Mierda! That’s a repeater concussion cannon. Four of them at least. Probably more loaded farther onto the transport. No markers, Empire or otherwise. Probably smugglers… Shavit. They saw me, and they aren’t happy.”

“Get out of there, Blue 8! Fall back. Do not engage!”

“Too late. They’ve got one of those things active, and they’re getting another one set up.”

Dex’s voice jumps in. “Blue 8, this is Blue 9. ETA in 90 seconds. Fall back and regroup. If they keep shooting, we’ll take a pass together.”

“Negative. I need to take this thing out before they get another set up. Or else we’ll be in bigger trouble.”

Jyn stopped registering the code in front of her minutes ago. Her fingers have moved to clench against the edge of the table in front of her. She knows that Cassian is a good pilot and a great shot, and Dex will be there soon, but she can’t help the way her stomach has hollowed out, her pulse started galloping in her throat.

“Blue 8, fall back! Do not engage!” Blue Leader roars. “Blue 8 ―” The sound of lasers firing fills the channel. “Andor! ANDOR! Kriff it, Andor! FALL BACK!”

The lasers stop, and there is a moment of silence over the comms.

“Blue Leader, Blue 8. Cannons neutralized. Situation contained,” Cassian’s voice comes calmly across the air waves.

A heavy sigh follows from the scanner and Jyn’s own chest. She releases her death grip on the table and shakes her hands out. “Andor, if you ever pull a stunt like that again. I will make sure you never fly another patrol.” Blue Leader’s voice is reined in but still has a little shake to it.

Jyn thinks hers would be the same if she tried to speak right now. She isn’t sure when she became so attached to the pain-in-her-arse called Cassian Andor, but these last few minutes have made her face the reality that she wants him to stick around for a long time… so she can keep picking fights with him, of course. All about the challenge of breaking that blank-faced spy façade. Nothing to do with the way her heart speeds up every time he looks at her like he can see right through to her very bone marrow. Of course.

“Blue 9,” Blue Leader continues. “Make sure Blue 8 gets back to base without blowing anything else up.”

“Yes, xer. Let’s go, Andor. Blue 9 and Blue 8 returning to base,” Dex replies, and Jyn can hear the barely contained laughter in his voice.

They call into the command tower with an ETA of twenty minutes, and Jyn saves her progress on her code, before shutting down her screen and telling the other slicer in the Cave that she’s going for a walk to reset her head.

She makes her way to the hangar, the tension in her chest transmuting into a fiery anger with every step. She stakes out a spot against the wall near Blue 8’s pad and waits for the boys to fly in, hands clenching and unclenching into fists over and over. She is still trying to decide what to say when the two U-wings screech into the hangar and are taxied over to their respective spaces.

Dex’s head pops out first, calling across their ships as the canopies slide open. “Nice shooting, Andor, but couldn’t you have waited for me? I missed all the fun!”

Jyn catches Cassian’s shrug as he throws himself out of the cockpit and onto the first rung of the ladder. “The ‘fun’ waits for no one,” he replies nonchalantly. It’s unfair how his long legs make the climb down to the hangar floor look so graceful, Jyn thinks for moment before she catches herself. Oogling Cassian Andor’s body is not what she’s here for. She is here to chew him out, to chew him out for scaring her ― no, for being reckless. That’s what she’ll tell him. That he was being reckless, possibly wasting resources the struggling rebellion couldn’t avoid to lose – himself included. 

She pushes off the wall and storms up to him the moment his feet hit solid ground. “Oh hey, Tiny ―” Cassian does not finish his nickname for her (a “present” from the K2 droid he’s been fiddling with since he was ten), because Jyn’s open hand flies at his cheek. The slap almost echoes off the metal of the machines around them.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Jyn demands. Cassian’s eyes are wide and surprised for only the second time since Jyn met him when she was eight, newly taken in by the Alliance after her parents’ deaths, and he was eleven, tasked to show her around the base and already training to be a spy. He does not raise a hand to touch the reddened skin, and Jyn does not know if this is training or shock.

But then she surprises both of them. She grabs the neckline of his flight suit for better leverage, raises herself on her tiptoes, and plants a kiss on his slackened lips. It’s quick, and Cassian does not respond, before she pulls back and starts berating him again.

“You stupid boy! You—“

Cassian finally shakes off his surprise, and his limbs move suddenly, jerkily as if they had been straining to reach her but were frozen in place until just now. He grabs the hand closest to himself, the one Jyn just released from his flight suit, and pulls her back into his chest. Then his lips are on hers. This kiss is longer, deeper, his other hand coming to wrap around the back of her neck, digging into the base of the bun she always wears. Cassian kisses like he’s asking forgiveness and smirking in triumph all at once, and Jyn is trying to figure out how to stay mad at him while he’s taking her breath away.

She gathers herself enough to pull back, chest heaving. “You stupid ―” Cassian leans back in and kisses the side of her neck, using the hand still tangled in her bun to tilt her head the way he wants. “Reckless ―” He switches sides. “Idiotic ―” Jyn’s voice fades with every kiss, a blurrg losing momentum. He moves up to place a final kiss on her forehead, and she closes her eyes. “― boy.”

Dex wolf whistles, and Jyn and Cassian are pulled from their moment to find the eyes of several curious onlookers, sentient and droid alike, on them. Jyn is pretty sure she hears someone whisper, “Finally,” but for once in her life, she chooses to hide her face in Cassian’s taller frame instead of turning around to fight them. For his part, Cassian shifts them so that his back is to the hangar, curling over Jyn to hide them from the prying eyes as best as he can.

Dex laughs and goes back to running through post-flight checks on Blue 9 when Jyn flashes him a rude hand signal from under Cassian’s embrace.

**Author's Note:**

> I like to think that Jyn rubbed off a little on Cassian, and he's still a spy with that cold, hard, blank spy face, but it cracks a little easier and he's a bit more reckless. For Jyn's part, she didn't have to struggle alone for years, so she's more trusting and open to relying on others, but still fiery and ready to throw fists at the slightest provocation.
> 
> This story was really just focused on that little plot bunny of Character A overhearing Character B doing something stupid and dangerous and greeting them with a slap and a surprise kiss, and then Character B kissing A back while they try to keep yelling at them but turn to putty in B's hands instead. So I hope you didn't mind that the rest of the world and action aren't really that fleshed out. Thanks for reading!
> 
> Radio protocol notes:  
> \- When calling someone on the radio, you use the format "Hey you, it's me." So "Blue Leader, [this is] Blue 8" means that Blue 8 is calling to Blue Leader.  
> \- "Copy" means that a transmission is understood.  
> \- "Break" can be said when you either are going to stop transmitting for a short bit but will pick up again soon (for example; your message is getting long, like a paragraph break, or you need to check some info real quick) or when you've finished a conversation with one person and are going to start a new one with someone else (as Blue Leader does in this fic).  
> \- ETA = Estimated Time of Arrival  
> \- "Copy direct" means that you heard and understood the conversation between other people.  
> \- If you use call signs on the regular (instead of last names or something like that), it can mean that you're worried about people outside of your organization overhearing. Which I imagine applies to the Alliance, so when Blue Leader resorts to "Andor" over comms, xe are definitely very upset.  
> \- Also, there's just a lot of really mundane radio chatter, especially of people coming and going, checking in and out, so that's why Jyn mostly tunes it out, but of course, she picks up on her friends' voices instinctively.  
> Hopefully that all makes sense. Let me know if there's anything that's still confusing!


End file.
